Roof vent clog question

[Fixit Wannabee]

I'll spare you the train of events that led me to conclude that one of my roof vents might be clogged, but here's what's happened when I decided to investigate: per advice on many websites, pouring water into a roof vent can tell you if it's clogged, and also maybe rinse out the debris that's causing the clog. Sounds simple, I can do that. I don't have a convenient hose connection at the moment, so I hauled a couple of gallon jugs of water up onto the roof, and dumped them into the suspect vent stack (there are two, the other one seems OK to me). Well, there's pretty clearly a clog, as the vent pipe filled up with water and the level went down really really really slowly. This particular vent pipe has a horizontal section inside the house; my 25-foot snake couldn't negotiate the 90 degree turn, and was ineffective in making any improvement in the vertical section it could get into. Since the water in the vertical pipe wasn't doing anyone any good, I managed to siphon quite a bit of it out again (not all), but now what? (Those 90-degree joints leak a bit too, just to add to the fun.)

 

[Cacher_Chick]

You still have not proved if the clog is in the vent or the drain system, but when there is an accessible pipe where I cannot get a snake through, I cut a section of it out and install another cleanout in it's place.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[BillTheEngineer]

If you poured water into the roof vent and it filled that would indicate that there is a clog between where you poured water in and the upper most fixture attached to the line. If the clog were below a fixture it would flow out through the fixture.

Since you have leaky joint best bet is to replace the horizontal section and the elbow.